Bret Stephens vs. Graham Platner
Graham Platner just won the Maine Democratic primary. I’m glad. To be honest, I can’t say that I was all that invested in Platner’s candidacy. I only really took notice of it a few days ago, and only because it belatedly occurred to me that Platner’s popularity is a slap in the face to centrist liberals, something I greatly enjoy. So I’m feeling good about their misery today.
Category Archives: character based voting
Graham Platner and the Merchants of Mass Death
The Graham Platner controversy is an instructively stupid one. It’s a little bit like the Katie Hill controversy of yesteryear, but even dumber.
Platner is accused of saying and doing some problematic things, mostly many years ago. The accusations fall into two categories. Either the facts are contested, or not. In the most serious cases, the facts are not only contested but essentially unknowable, which raises the suspicion that many of the allegations are either exaggerations, false memories, or lies. In the uncontested cases, what is alleged is simply not serious enough to be disqualfying. Much of the “scandal” turns on the widespread inability to grasp or acknowledge the fact that people often say things in anger or through thoughtlessness that they don’t really mean. These claims often don’t tell us very much in the first instance except that the person lacks a certain kind of self-control. Once the problematic claim comes out, it’s out, but if sincerely apologized for, much of the problem is, often enough, resolved.
Continue readingWould Mikie Sherrill Lie to You?
Both sides in the dispute over Delaney Hall have accused New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill of lying about the State Police response to the protesters outside of the facility. A preliminary to litigating any such dispute is to address a prior question: would Mikie Sherrill lie to you? Is she even capable of it? Are there conditions under which you could expect Sherrill to lie?
We’re forced to ask such questions because if one goes by PR appearances, the answer would seem to be no. Mikie Sherrill is a former Navy helicopter pilot, a former prosecutor, a successful former Congressional representative, and an attractive suburban soccer mom. Surely such a civic-minded person is incapable of lying to anyone?
Continue readingCharacter, Complicity, and the Epstein Files
Monsters rule your world
Are you too scared to understand?
–Motorhead, “The Brotherhood of Man”
The first thing I have to say about the Epstein Files is that at this point, nobody can tell me that character-based voting is a politically-irrelevant fringe idea, and that my banging on about it for the last decade has been a waste of breath. A person’s sheer presence in the Epstein Files is not by itself evidence of guilt, but when the files do furnish evidence of guilt, it’s obvious that the guilt in question is politically relevant whether or not it’s policy relevant. Imagine that we resurrected a version of Jeffrey Epstein whose policy views aligned with yours, and who was running for office. Would you vote for him? Would Jason Brennan?
Character-Based Voting: Mamdani, Cuomo, Sliwa
For years now, I’ve been railing against an argument of Jason Brennan’s concerning character-based voting. Brennan’s argument holds that when it comes to voting, unless a candidate’s character can be shown to be a proxy for the policies he’ll adopt, predictions about those policies should trump judgments about character. In other words, when it comes to voting, the policies you predict that a candidate will adopt are more important than any character-based fact or set of facts about his fitness for office right now. Continue reading
Benavides for NJ Governor
Ciattarelli is a fascist, Sherrill is a fraud, and Kaplan lacks clarity. Benavides is pro-ITA, anti-ICE, anti-IHRA, pro-divestment, and a paradigm of honesty and commonsense. If you live in New Jersey, write her in.
Continue readingKarma Comes for Mikie Sherrill
A controversy has recently broken out in the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. Mikie Sherrill, who has long touted her experience as a helicopter pilot for the Navy, is now facing the somewhat exaggerated charge that she “cheated her way” through the Naval Academy (to quote hearsay from the Internet).
The backstory is this: Nicholas DeGregorio, a supporter of Sherrill’s opponent in the race, made a records request re Sherrill, including her Naval Academy record, to the National Personnel Center of the National Archives. Continue reading
Resistance in Action (2)
The Princeton ITA Resolution Passes
Part 1 of this series.
Well, readers, it passed: the “Princeton Resolution of the Mayor and Council of Princeton Supporting the Passage of the Immigrant Trust Act” passed unanimously tonight, 5-0, with two absences. Having read the texts of several of the ITA municipal resolutions out there, I would say that Princeton’s is probably the best of the bunch: the strongest, clearest, and most explicit about its political aims. Continue reading
Not a Rhetorical Question
How is it that a foreigner, Naftali Bennett, can come to the United States and suggest that Americans be blown up—yet no American has the legal right to suggest that we do the same to Naftali Bennett? I can guarantee that there would be volunteers. At least one.
Journey of a Thousand Miles
“A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.”
–Lao Tzu (supposedly)
From my March 22 post on recent events at Columbia:
What’s not a question is that strategic planners who couldn’t see this coming do not deserve to be employed. In a just world, these overpaid, over-hyped, preening incompetents would be thrown unceremoniously out of their plush offices directly into the streets of Morningside Heights.
From The New York Times, less than a week later: Continue reading
Policy of Truth 